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The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
- Narrated by: Daniela Nardini
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
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The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
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Publisher's summary
The "actually unputdownable" (Ali Smith) fourth novel from the award-winning author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait: the shocking, breathtaking story of a woman’s life stolen, and reclaimed.
Edinburgh in the 1930s. The Lennox family is having trouble with its youngest daughter. Esme is outspoken, unconventional, and repeatedly embarrasses them in polite society. Something will have to be done.
Years later, a young woman named Iris Lockhart receives a letter informing her that she has a great-aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released.
Iris has never heard of Esme Lennox and the one person who should know more, her grandmother Kitty, seems unable to answer Iris’s questions. What could Esme have done to warrant a lifetime in an institution? And how is it possible for a person to be so completely erased from a family’s history?
Critic reviews
A WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER
A WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"Actually unputdownable, written with charge and energy and a kind of compelling drive, a clarity and a gripping dramatic insidiousness reminiscent of classic Daphne du Maurier."―Ali Smith
"O'Farrell's subtlety and delicate touch have never been so finely demonstrated."―Independent on Sunday
"[The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox] has the dream-like intensity of imagination and the gift of conveying pain, fear and sometimes rapture for which 0'Farrell is known. . . . The story never flags. . . . Beneath the cool Edwardian detail of this elegantly written book lie the horrors of a Gothic novel."―The Guardian
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